THE ZEALOT AND THE EMANCIPATOR

The veteran historian maintains his high standards in this study of two of 19th-century America’s most significant figures.

Although still controversial, John Brown (1800-1859) needs no rehabilitation. Brands, the chair of the history department at the University of Texas, reminds readers that Brown was not only an abolitionist (an extremist position for the time); he considered Blacks equal to Whites, an extraordinary belief shared by few contemporaries. He was also deeply religious, obsessed with freeing the slaves—even by violence, which seemed the only way—and charismatic enough to convince many establishment abolitionists to finance his campaigns. With his sons, he traveled to Kansas to participate in the nasty 1850s conflict between free-state and pro-slavery settlers, where he severely damaged his reputation with the 1856 Pottawatomie massacre, during which his band dragged five pro-slavery men from their beds and murdered them. Brands delivers a gripping account of his 1859 raid on Harpers Ferry but succeeds no more than colleagues in explaining its utter incompetence. Capturing the nearly undefended armory was simple; clumsy efforts to provoke a slave rebellion failed, and Brown dithered when escape was easy. Severely injured during his capture, he was tried and hanged. The author rocks no boats by affirming that the raid galvanized the nation and set it on course to civil war. Wisely avoiding another standard biography of Lincoln, Brands confines himself to a sharp portrait of a fiercely ambitious Illinois politician yearning for electoral office. Like nearly all Republicans at the time, he opposed expanding slavery and, like most, promised not to interfere with it in existing states because the Constitution, a sacred document, protected it. Lincoln considered slavery wrong, but winning elections depended on White voters, so his arguments stressed slavery’s harm to White interests. Opposition Democrats accused Republicans of believing that Blacks were equal to Whites. In defending himself and his party, Lincoln’s statements about race went beyond what, from other historical figures—presidents included—has led to toppled statues.

An outstanding dual biography.